Column: What is your favorite old Kentucky home?

Craig Potts outside the Kentucky Heritage Council office, 300 Washington St., Frankfort. Potts invites Kentuckians to hold a sign that says “This is MY Old Kentucky Home” in front of your favorite Old Kentucky Home, take a snapshot, and enter it on the Kentucky Heritage Council’s Facebook page.
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Kentucky Heritage Council has launched an online contest based on our state song.

Through our “This is MY Old Kentucky Home” Facebook photo contest, we invite Kentuckians to share how and why they value historic buildings.

The only rule is, the building or other place pictured in the photo must be 50 years of age or older. The contest deadline is midnight Friday, May 23.

Many things draw people to Kentucky – natural beauty, sporting events and bourbon, to name a few. But when you take a closer look at the places that bring visitors to communities, including restaurants, art galleries and local businesses, you often find a historic building whose charm is embodied in its authenticity, not to mention historic attractions that are destinations unto themselves.

In Kentucky, we are fortunate to have an abundance of historic resources. These are the places that evoke a shared heritage, and tell stories about our past and who we are today.

Many communities have beautifully preserved downtowns, which have benefited from participation in the Kentucky Main Street Program, a community revitalization strategy with building preservation at its core. Others range from Civil War battlefields to grand homes like the Governor’s Mansion, to the Belle of Louisville, historic African American hamlets, churches, public buildings, old distilleries, even prehistoric archaeological sites that span the state.

But historic resources also include places that not everyone might associate with being “historic” – like kitschy roadside architecture, farms passed down through generations, post-war neighborhoods, Ranch-style houses, steel-truss bridges, old factories, state park buildings constructed through the Works Progress Administration, even early roadways lined by rock fences.

As the state historic preservation office, the Kentucky Heritage Council’s mission is to encourage and assist with the protection and preservation of all of these places, and that’s why we join with others across the nation each May to celebrate National Historic Preservation Month.

Preservation simply means taking care of historic resources, and in the commonwealth this is something we do well. Historic places matter to Kentuckians, and we take pride in them just as we do our home state, which we honor each year by singing “My Old Kentucky Home” just prior to the Derby.

To commemorate National Historic Preservation Month and highlight all the many historic places that Kentuckians call “home,” the Kentucky Heritage Council has launched an online contest based on our state song. Through our “This is MY Old Kentucky Home” Facebook photo contest, we invite Kentuckians to share how and why they value historic buildings and to show us the place where they feel most “at home.”

The premise is simple. Hold a sign that says “This is MY Old Kentucky Home” in front of your favorite Old Kentucky Home, take a snapshot, “like” our Facebook page, then click the “Enter to Win” icon to enter it into the contest. Anyone who “likes” KHC’s Facebook page can also click on the contest icon to vote daily for his or her favorites. The only rule is, the building or other place pictured in the photo must be 50 years of age or older. The contest deadline is midnight Friday, May 23.

This promotion is about celebrating the cultural and architectural inheritance that has been passed down to us. Landmarks such as Federal Hill and Churchill Downs help define our collective identity. But Kentucky’s history as presented through our buildings is so much richer – and so much more culturally, ethnically and aesthetically diverse – that we find meaning in many different kinds of historic places, large and small, in every corner of the commonwealth.

Our goal is to expand the message of the song and the idea of “My Old Kentucky Home” to reflect the broader diversity of Kentucky’s built environment. We also hope to create interest in the reuse and rehabilitation of historic buildings and raise awareness about the importance of preservation, so that future generations will also be able to call these special places “home.”

Craig Potts is Kentucky Heritage Council executive director and state historic preservation officer.